Today I’m featured in an interview with writer/blogger Holly Hughes, whom I met at the SCBWI conference last year. Not only am I thrilled and honored that she wanted to highlight my work, I’m especially thankful for the thoughtful questions she put forth allowing me to sit back and reflect on process, inspiration and how life has lead me to becoming an illustrator. Check it out at http://writerhughes.wordpress.com
Enjoy!
The prompt was the first paragraph of Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland which I absolutely adored tackling. A part of me wanted to make it classic and part of me wanted to see a modern Alice. So after wrestling with it a few weeks, I decided to do both: Illustrate in a classic style, but have the actual era be present day.
For the composition, and this was really the fun part, my mind kept being seduced by the magic of a pop-up book, 2D and 3D intertwined. When I worked on the piece I actually worked in three separate planes: rabbit, Alice, and the sister (do we ever even learn her name? I can’t remember….must consult Carroll again) and the city line. I had all these figures on separate sheets of paper that I moved around and taped together. Even once I scanned in each “plane”, they were moved around and resized a bit. The whole process was a time-consuming mess and I didn’t know exactly what it would result in, but in the end, it all came together and most importantly I had a blast playing with it.
Now I want a pop-up book project!
This is just a doodle I created for my old blogger address as a visual to tell people that I am now located here at aliceink.com. It was only meant to stay a rough, but I decided to flesh it out into a final spot art piece and submit it to SCBWI’s art spot column. I did get a nice reply that despite the fact that it will not be running in the next column, they are keeping for future bulletin use! Hope to see it in print soon. In the meantime, it’s going into the portfolio as I am in need of spot art and black and white pieces for the portfolio showcase at the next SCBWI National Conference in LA! I can’t wait!
Finished illustration of Illustration Friday’s “Intention” which was several weeks ago. This piece went through several technique combinations: Pencil, ink, pencil with digital color, ink with colored pencil…The conclusion was to merge ink/colored pencil shading with digital color
. Now that I have the process figured out, the next few should (hopefully) not be so laborious.
Thank you all for your patience while I slowly navigate the forest migrating from another host account and format. Progress is being made daily. Please keep visiting!
With the enormous task of fleshing out my portfolio looming before me, I am aiming to tackle more black and white/spot art. Illustration Friday is my inspiration of choice for the next few months. This past week’s word was “Intention.”
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations.
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Entry for the 2012 SCBWI Carolinas art contest
